On this day in 1937, for the first time in congressional annals, Congress held two joint sessions in a single day.

In the first one, legislators counted electoral votes from the 1936 presidential election. Vice President John Nance Garner announced that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had 523 electoral votes, coasting to a second term. Measured by electoral votes, it remains the most lopsided contested presidential election in U.S. history.

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POLITICO 44

An hour later, Congress reconvened to hear Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address. (In 1934, the president decided to deliver this constitutionally mandated message in person — a practice generally followed since.) In congressional history, such double sessions have occurred only three times — each during Roosevelt’s tenure.

In 1940, Roosevelt dumped Garner, a Texan who had served 15 terms in the House, the last as speaker. For his third presidential campaign, Roosevelt chose as his running mate Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, who was more attuned than Garner to FDR’s New Deal programs.

During Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, Congress held a joint session and joint meeting on the same day. A joint session, which requires a concurrent resolution, is reserved for presidential addresses and for tabulating the Electoral College results. A joint meeting requires the unanimous consent of both House and Senate to stand in recess in order to meet with the other chamber. Joint meetings are usually reserved for speeches by foreign leaders.

The five most recent presidents – Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – have each addressed a joint session of Congress shortly after being inaugurated. But these are not regarded as a State of the Union Addresses, which each man later dispatched to Capitol Hill separately.